


that would be enough

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Book 6: The Winds of Winter, F/M, Fic Exchange, Minor Character Death, POSSIBLY!!!, and everyone died off-screen, but no major ones, shhh - Freeform, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25758235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Jaime, pining.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 60
Kudos: 267
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	that would be enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tkanb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkanb/gifts).



> fingers crossed you like it!

Jaime isn’t a man given to pity. She knows that. She _knows_. And still, she expects that he’ll —

What, Brienne?

“I’ve only enough coin for one room,” she tells him, and he turns his narrow-eyed contemplation away from the inn, and unto her.

“Thought that I wouldn’t make it, wench?”

”I did not plan for you at all,” she says, truthfully enough. Admitting her failure in so many ways, though he’s too thick-headed to see it. She can confess to him and he hears nothing, sees nothing, because she is ugly. She might as well be speaking of the weather.

“Ugly,” says Jaime aloud. “An ugly place.”

Brienne starts. “What?

“The inn. I mislike the look of it.”

“You do not seem a man given to portents and signs.”

“Every man is a prophet before a battle — you know that as well as I do.” He’s still staring up at the inn — the bowed roof, the mildewed walls; he’s searching the windows like he can pick out danger from a shadow.

Brienne restrains herself from touching her neck, barely. The rope-burn stings; the mark of the noose must still be there, red as a brand. Stupid to be more aware of that than of her other pains. “We left the battle in the woods, I think. And if we’re to find another camp before dark we must leave now.”

“You would stay here?”

”I’m no seer,” she says. “To my mind there is nothing here but the usual.”

Jaime looks at her, now. “And what is that, my lady?”

Is he mocking, when he calls her that? Of course he is, and it’s usual for him to vex her, so she keeps her face clear of embarrassment. “It’ll be poor folk here, with poor supper to offer, and their linens crawling with vermin.”

“I’m more interested in food than bed,” says Jaime.

Brienne does blush at that: but he is again searching the sky.

*

The interior is an overwhelming expanse of brown. The walls are dull with soot and cobwebs and so are the folks, wearing filthy clothes, accepting coin and requests with the flat affect of people who have seen and suffered enough.

Brienne waits until they are eating before she says: “The place is all brown.”

Jaime blinks at her. “What?”

“The table, the floor, the bread, the stew, the mud in the yard —“

“So?”

She is very serious. “How long could you stand to live without color?”

Jaime looks at her, looks — exactly as he’s been trying not to do — he knows what expression mhst be on his face. Gods help them if she can see it, too.

Her eyes are large and clear, blue enough to bring to mind the sky; her mouth is broad and red. She’s been chewing on it again.

No world is colorless with Brienne in it.

And now pink crawls up her face.

“Nevermind,” she mumbles.

“Do you think the rooms are brown?” he says, intending to divert her from embarrassment — and then he hears himself. Clears his throat. “You can let me know tomorrow, wench.”

His chivalry is, as ever, misplaced. She scowls at him. “Why should you give me the room?”

“Because you’re a maid.” Probably. “And you would prefer to maintain that state.” Apparently. “And I will be perfectly fine bedding down in the stable.” If there is one.

She pokes with her spoon at the little pool of soup remaining in her bowl. “There is no reason we cannot stay together. That is what I’d intended, with -“

She stops.

Podrick. Yes, well. Podrick doesn’t need a room anymore, nor a bed. “It’s alright,” says Jaime.

“He trusted me.”

“You did not hang him.”

“I may as well have done. Jaime —“

“Wench?” he says, when she does not go on.

“Nothing. Nothing. We should retire soon.”

 _We_ , he thinks. There is something new about her, and it is not only the mark of the rope on her throat and the half-healed scar on her cheek. She looks sure and uncertain and frightened and bold — and how long have you known her enough to see all this, Lannister? How long have you spent looking?

“Let’s go, then,” he says.

They undress in the near-dark, backs turned to each other. “I’ll take the floor,” says Jaime, mostly to tweak at her sense of pride.

The arrow finds its mark; he can feel her stiffen up even with his eyes on the empty corner. “I’m perfectly alright to sleep there, myself. And besides, you’re ...”  
A cripple, she might have said. An old man.

Anyone else, and Jaime would crack them across the face for this. He’s certainly beat men for less.

Tonight — here and now, and with her — he unlaces his stupid, heavy hand and lets it rest on the only chair in the room. “I’ll sleep in front of the door,” he says, turning to face her, forgetting he isn’t allowed.

She nods: a pale blur in a paler shift.

Jaime settles down. It’s too damn dark to see her anyway, even if he wanted to, even if he needed another look to know what she looks like, what he wants.

Sometime in the night she calls out for him and he wakes, thinking vaguely _it’s Hoat’s men again_ and they’re underground now, she has both hands on his sword ... “Brienne?”

“Are you awake?”

He is now. Every inch of his body feels pulled taut. Like before a battle, yes. Or other things. “Are you ill?”

”No. Yes.” She sits up, ghost-like. “I feel hot.”

He rises to his feet and puts his fingers to her forehead. “You’re not warm. Was it a dream? Stoneheart again?”

“No. Not this time. Jaime —“

He stands straight and looks at her.

She twists her hands in the sheet.

“If you expect me to know your thoughts by proximity,” says Jaime, “we’ll need more practice.” _More proximity would be an excellent first step,_ says his cock. Thank the gods his shirt is long and her experience is non-existent.

But the latter is another issue: she looks so young.

... She looks her age. She is — what, one and twenty? A child.

By her age, he had been knighted; he had fought in wars and slew Aerys and spent more nights than he could bear to think of, standing immobile while Rheanna cried out for help. And what did you do then, Jaime? What could he do about it now?

He could ignore the blood pooling in his middle and go the fuck to sleep. “I’ll—“

“Sleep with me,” she says.

“No need, wench. Last night I lay down on rocks. This floor is softer than —“

“We might be dead tomorrow. I know that. I know — I don’t know - and I trust you.”

 _She does not know what she is saying_ is his first thought and his only thought: he waits for something more memorable to show up but is finally left with telling Brienne she does not know her own mind.

She is predictably displeased; she chews on her mouth and glares at him. She is so ugly — truly, she is — her big broad mouth and crooked teeth, the broad shoulders poking out of her shift, the freckles he can’t see tonight, dotting her breasts and thighs and maybe, maybe even a few in the place between, where the water ran down, when ...

“Jaime,” she says, irritable with him now —

and that is so completely and _typically_ Brienne, exactly as when she tells him off about some little commonplace thing he’s done poorly, that he can’t think any more about it; he touches her face and she rises on her knees to kiss him, kiss him first and bravely, he sees that, even in the dark, because she is trembling.  
Brienne.

Slow, he’s thinking, dimly. _Slow_. She’s a maid, she is frightened. We will be slow about it, and if she changes her mind ...

Then she kisses him again and all thought dissolves.

  
They do not go slow.

  
They stare at each other; her eyes are wide and solemn and dark.

Jaime feels the sudden, horrible urge to laugh at her. At both of them. “Well,” he says. “Tomorrow you can go to your grave a woman, in every sense of the word. That must rest your mind.”

She worries her lip between her teeth again. “I do not intend to die tomorrow.”

“Neither do I, wench.”

“My name —“

“Is Brienne. I know. Did you — was it really for that, for you? That you could die and still be a maiden?” Gods, could he be more a child? Might as well pull her pigtails. Be mine. He adds, “Your virginity never plagued you overmuch before, to my eyes.”

“You certainly plagued me enough about it, ser.”

“If you think this will stop me from teasing you,” he begins to say, and drops it. 

“I do not expect that anything I do will stop you.”

She’s right: and for that reason, pure perversity makes him want to never bother her again.

He is thinking on this and wondering when sleep drags him down.

Unfamiliar light, unfamiliar sounds: is that the wench in her nightshirt? He squints at her. “Why are you dressing?”

“Oh,” she says, “you’re awake now?”

Jaime is not a morning person. He sits up. Rubs his face. “Why are you wearing clothes?”

“We must leave.”

“Not yet,” he says. “Come here.”

She frowns and comes over — gods, she really is an innocent yet - and Jaime pulls her into bed. Holds her down beside him, much as he is able with one hand. She’s breathing quick and shallow. “What are you doing?”

His chest hurts - he’s only just starting to associate that pain with being around her. “Are you afraid of me now?”

“Should I be afraid? Are you going to hurt me?”

He lets go. “Would I be able to hurt you even if I wanted to do it? Have you lost your muscles and your training since last night? Have I grown another hand?”

Bless the girl, she looks down to check. He chokes down a laugh — she’d think it was at her. “Brienne.”

She hears the laugh in his voice anyway, and glares at him. “I don’t know men,” she says. “I don’t understand them. How can I know what you'll do?”

“You knew a man well enough to bed one.” Willingly, too; that matters. "You wanted to do it."

“That was different. That was you.”

“Exactly,” he says.

She still looks unsure. Unconvinced.

He says aloud — he sees now they must say everything aloud to each other, they have not yet learned to share thoughts after all — he says, “I would sleep with you again if you wanted it, wen — Brienne.”

She is startled; she blinks at him with those luminous eyes. Cow's eyes. “It’s daylight.”

“So I’ll be able to see you properly,” he says: and she helps him pull her shift over her head.

It’s better the second time, slower. He can see her face now and she can see his, and she has enough sense to tell him That and This and Not There and Oh Yes Jaime Jaime Please Jaime, which is about the sweetest thing he has ever heard, rivaling when he was knighted, so he makes her say it again and again, til he's grinding his teeth and swearing into her hair, saying her name. _Brienne_.

“Was that alright?” he says: it’s pure revenge this time. They could have been doing this for months now. Years! Stubborn wench.

No rosy afterglow for this one; she’s sweaty and pink and annoyed with him again. She is wonderful. She swings her legs over the bed and gets up, casting about for her smallclothes. “We should have been gone three hours ago.”

“We can stay another night,” he says, only half-serious. “Neither one of us slept well —“

Muffled by her shift, she reminds him “I haven’t coin for that.”

“I do,” says Jaime: and then she really is angry, and he can’t stop laughing.

*

  
Jaime is a stubborn, insolent, godless sort of man, thinks Brienne. 

He's asleep with his arms below his head for a pillow, shut eyelids defying the daylight and her scolding. She's never known a man to sleep as easily as he does. A soldier's habit, he told her long ago, but ...

She thought she wouldn't stop blushing to be in front of him, but there was nothing strange about it at all -- only a little bit of newness. Wanting him is an old habit. She doubts they will live long enough to make a habit out of having him.

 _Are you sure_ he asked her half a dozen times, no matter what she said in return, and she'd never been surer of anything than of how his hand felt on her waist, his mouth on her breast.

Maybe he was asking himself. He wept afterwards, while she lay on her side and feigned sleep. She wanted to comfort him --

Then they woke and loved again, she was sore and glad, hungry and glad, locking her legs around his back and biting into the meat of his shoulder while he made noises into her ear. 

She might never be knighted, she might never be loved, she might die on her stomach in the mud after all, but she has this -- she has reached out and received an answer. It will be enough.

 _Let_ it be enough.

His hair is in his face. She pushes it back behind his ears and he smiles, even in his sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> there are, probably, satorial differences between a nightgown and a shift. i do not care about those differences


End file.
